A cruel world, where everybody stands and keeps score
by Gwenchan93
Summary: Being a skating legend and having a private life aren't compatible. Or so Victor used to think. [Victor-centric][Ep.12 spoilers]


**A cruel world, where everybody stands and keeps score**

The first time Victor hears the word "competition", he's five years old, almost six, and he needs the dictionary on the second shelf of the library, the one he can't reach unless he climbs on a chair, to understand its meaning. Luckily he has just learnt to read.

He heard his coach – not Yakov, not yet, another one – telling his mother, after that double toe-loop perfectly executed. It took him only a couple of weeks passed observing the movements of older skaters to learn the jump all by himself. The coach tells his mother he's talented, truly talented. He has the talent to rise to the top and, almost all of sudden, figure skating stops being a childish amusement.

People repeat he can be a champion. They say his name is an omen. At five, however, contrary to what folks will think, Victor doesn't care much. He's five and, even though he isn't stupid, he still can't grasp how giant the change will be.

Those are the blessed years when coaches – Yakov is the third and last – still manage to keep him under control; the times before the boy, finally aware of his gift, started to show the independence of the genius.

When Yuri drags his suitcase inside Victor's apartment, on an early afternoon, his eyes immediately start looking for something and continue during all the home tour.

"Something's wrong?"

"The medals."

"What?"

"Where are the medals?" Yuri asks without stopping a moment to look around. Victor needs some second to process the message. Sometimes he forgets that a part of Yuri, no matter what, still venerates him like an idol.

He pouts.

"You have just arrived and all you can think about are my medals!" he protests, sing-songing. Victor presses the accent of that possessive on purpose. Victor's a primadonna, an actor and, being one, he doesn't refrain from that kind of excessive drama that would make anyone who doesn't know him beyond the mask roll eyes.

"No. No –" Yuri apologies in a rush. Victor shrugs.

"They are in the safe in my bedroom. Ours." he adds. There's no need to hide similar information from Yuri. Victor, who has never been good with words, hopes that the Japanese will understand the message behind the form.

"Mine. Ours. There's a guest room, if you want to stay. But I'd like you to sleep in my bedroom. Ours."

They're close, as always, only not as much as usually. During the months spent with Yuri, knowing him, trying to understand how his mind works, Victor has learnt that effusions are something always on the thin line between allowance and mistake. Outside the ice is all so much complicated. Without an Eros to wake up, Victor just takes Yuri's right hand in his.

To his surprise, it's Yuri to deepen the gesture, wrapping Victor's back with his arms and burying his face in Victor's turtleneck, so light in comparison to the sweater Yuri has bundled up in to face the rigid Russian winter.

Victor reminds himself to raise the heating of a couple of degrees.

"That would be great. I missed you, Victor."

Victor would point out that Yuri has been in Hasetsu only for a week, but he has learnt the hard way how Yuri's anxiousness can distort words meaning and transform innocent jokes in heavy accusations.

Moreover he's not in the position to criticize when after the Roestelcom Cup he went to Fukuoka airport knowing to be in advance of thirteen hours.

Victor has seen a ton of airports during his career. Most of them were of transit, between stopovers, between an arrival and a departure. Of many cities, the airport is all Victor knows about.

For him "airport" is the smell of bad coffee at five in the morning. It's the backpack containing the skates well strapped on his back, with the promise it will never go in the cargo hold. It's Yakov arguing at the security check when Victor is still too young to be Victor, yelling that the skates aren't an improper weapon. Victor will never forget the furious fight at the check-in on that November 2001.

Airports are also duty free shops where hours between flights seem to pass quicker. There was a female skater, six years older than him, who used to buy a lipstick of a different colour for each airport visited. Sheremetyevo is cherry red. Her name was Katia. She's a PE teacher in an elementary school, or so Victor has heard.

It's in one of those duty free that Victor buys some rubber bands because his hair has started to be long enough to be a bother when he skates. A couple of day later he wins his first gold medal at the Junior European championship and, already superstitious like only an athlete can be, he decides he won't abandon that canary yellow rubber band anymore.

"What about this?"

Yuri holds a few centimetres high trophy, with a Cyrillic inscription at the base. Victor's eyes lighten even before his mouth bend in a smile.

"My first podium, in a regional competition. I was eight – no, nine" he corrects himself, tapping a finger on his lips. "Third. A fall after a triple axel" he adds, anticipating the other question. Yuri's widened eyes shine with curiosity. The news is too dull to be published on a newspaper of webpage, but for this it is even more interesting.

"Tell me."

"It's not very interesting."

"Tell me."

It's a minor competition, a local championship between clubs. Some older skaters hope to be noticed by sponsors for their debut in major circuits. Victor too would like to be noticed. He's aware he has only a couple of years left before reaching the age when he will be able to access the international junior competitions.

European championships are the first goal and that triple axel is his ticket in **.**

Victor trained in secret, ignoring Yakov's warnings. He fell enough times to have bruises on bruises. His right ankle hurt in the skate so tight he feels like his foot is being strangled. Maybe he has sprained it, but he forces himself to resist for those few minutes of the routine.

Victor has lost track of how many times he has fallen. People, even Yuri, don't believe him when he says he fell at least a million times.

"You've never fallen during a competition."

"Exactly, during a competition. It's all about not falling during competitions."

He fell in the wings, he fell during practices, when all the others have already left the rink and he was still there trying his first quads, working on that quad flip that will become his trademark but at eighteen was only a dream.

At nine he fell on his chin so hard one of his baby teeth knock out.

When Victor tells Yuri, he doesn't believe it.

"I'm sure mom kept that tooth. She bets some fanatic would buy it for a fortune if only she puts it on e-bay."

Yuri's face should express disgust, but in the micro mimic Victor also read a hint of interest.

"Are you wondering how much would it cost?" Victor teases him. Yuri shakes his head, jumping.

"No! All right, a little. I'm sorry, it was rude of me. Did your mother keep also your hair?" he then asks, cautiously. Victor denies.

"Come! It's almost time for Makkachin's walk."

Yuri doesn't argue. It's like in Barcelona, before the Grand Prix final, when they almost had a fight for a stupid bag of nuts.

Yuri too is learning to recognize Victor's moods, suffocated to the point of being invisible. Victor can't recall the last time he had a violent emotive reaction before someone else. Even when he started crying in front of Yuri his was more an elegant loosing water from the eyes. When Yuri cries, he truly does it. His cry is sincere, with a running nose and a twisted face. He's ugly and beautiful in his honesty. Victor doesn't doubt even Yuri has been taught to hide his weaknesses – Yurio told him how he found Yuri "whining" in the man restroom in Sochi – but the act couldn't hold its grasp on him.

With Victor things went differently. He knows part of his success depends on the image it has been sewed on him. People expect him to be a charming prince, with always a smile and a wink for his ever-growing fanbase.

"Thank you. Keep on supporting me" is the first English phrase he learns. The first ever. Even before knowing how to say "good morning" or "good evening". More than words, he memorizes the sounds and then he repeats them with his strong Russian accent.

Tenk you. Kip on supportin' mi.

The voice of a younger past self crackles from an old VHS, by now in black and white.

Some years later Chris teaches him to say the same phrase in French and German.

Fame is the smiles that the more seem sincere and the less they are, when somebody insists a little too much to offer him a drink or holds him in a possessive way while taking a shoot. In those moments Victor thanks Yakov's presence, as he can still run hiding behind his coach's back like with a guard dog.

He has to smile even receiving insults from other skaters' supporters who, the more he wins medals, the more hate him. He has to smile when a nurse sews a cut on his forehead, all that is left of a vodka bottle broken on his head by a drunkard.

He smiles when a punk runs over him on purpose with his bike and for a couple of weeks Victor is forced to skate with an arm hanging from his neck, because there isn't a day to lose.

Yakov repeats he shouldn't care about this stuff, that it's the price of fame, and with time Victor learns to stuff his ears.

He's twenty when he cuts his hair, alone, with the excuse that the public wants to be surprised and the androgynous image he has kept up to now is old. His is a 360° degree change: new haircut, new clothes, new routines, and new songs. The canary yellow rubber band ends up in the trash, together with the eyeliner, the make-up pencil and that plum-coloured lipstick Katia gave him for his sixteenth birthday.

The truth is he has seen his image on magazines so many times he can't recognize his face anymore. He's tired to be treated like a princess. He's so tired. He loathes it.

Now he understands Yurio's deep hate for the nickname of "Russian Fairy".

He cuts his hair in the rink restroom and throws it in the dumpster where homeless people search for some food before the cold winter kills them.

Sometimes it happens, his mother says, and Victor's heart becomes as hard as the ice where his blades trace kilometres.

Skate! You're the hero of Russia, skate! We need a rival, skate!

Now there's nothing but figure skating. When he doesn't train, his mind is already thinking about the next choreography, finding a way to leave the judges open-mouthed once again to win another medal, another gold.

When sleeping, he dreams of spins and jumps.

Without Yuri, Victor would have keep on like this for another season at least, wondering what to do after a more and more inevitable retire. He could barely manage to get an eight-grade license, so there aren't a lot of careers he can aspire to. He can be a choreographer, maybe.

It's a luck Cialdini has dragged Yuri to that banquet. Victor will have to thank him properly one of these days. He'll ask Phichith to help him - the Thai skater must know Celestino – or the Crispino twins, Cialdini being of Italian origins.

There are so many people Victor has to thank.

"You can still come and help with the hot springs. We could open a skating school in Hasetsu. I'm sure Yuuko and Minako-sensei would be enthusiast."

This is what Yuri will tell him, some months later, when Victor will find the courage to reveal his fears. In the same period Yuri will stop saying "Victor's home" and start calling it his home too. Their home.

Makkachin is happy today and drags poor Yuri around, forcing him to almost skate on St Petersburg icy streets. For a strange analogy, Victor brings his fingers to his throat and is almost surprised to not find the invisible collar that for years he has felt tightening around his neck, with the shackle shortening every time he won.

"Come on, give it to me before you finish under a car" he offers, taking the leash from Yuri hands, only to change his mind soon after and leave the dog free to run down the bridge.

He has trained well Makkachin, after all. He'll teach Yuri all the orders in Russian the poodle responds to. There are so many things Victor wants to teach about his country. Three, no, two months and Yuri will be able to read Cyrillic like a native. He wonders if his mother will be willing to share her borscht recipe with the future son-in-law.

"Something wrong?" Yuri interrupts him.

"Not anymore."


End file.
